Two points might account for the enduring appeal of today’s topic, added Dr Shaikh: one, is the (mainly Western) fear of global meltdown without the army in control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, which are seen as being at risk of falling into the hands of religious extremists. (In short. Pakistan is viewed in Western corridors of power as ‘too important to fail’, for all the wrong reasons). This is a red herring, she believed, but one which ensures that the Pakistan army will continue to enjoy tacit Western support for its dominance over Pakistan’s national affairs. Secondly, the idea of the army as Pakistan’s ultimate guarantor has roots in the political classes’ complicity with the military, as they look to that institution as the arbiter best placed to settle their differences – despite the fact that the Pakistan army has almost never proved to be an honest broker. As long as Pakistan’spolitical parties choose to curry favour with the armed custodians of power overdialogue with each other, she concluded, the Army can hardly be blamed for claiming the mantleof guardianship over a state whose political governors have so signally failed toassume their responsibilities.

In order to understand Pakistan wenormally try and analyse it from its birth. Yet, argued author &journalist MJ Akbar,it might be equallyuseful to try and understand the country from the basis of its death in1971. Pakistan’s problem as a state is that it was born out of an idea that has neither resonance in history, nor validity in a conventional and contemporary age: that religion can be the basis of a modern nation state. If Islam or Christianity for example, could be sufficient as the basis for a nation state, why would there be 22 Arab countries, or separate European nations? Nationalism has to have a very different set of impulses, ideas and rationales to hold people together; indeed, the notion that Islam could be the basis of a nation state collapsed when the majority of Muslims of the original Pakistan walked away and recreated themselves through common linguistic ethnicity – a far more valid form of cohesion. This problem behind the idea of Pakistan has led to the country becoming a ‘toxic jelly state’, continuing to quiver and toxic due to its nuclear and military capabilities, and Islamic fundamentalism running through its political veins. It is thus unable to provide stability either for its own people or for the region. On the question of Pakistan and India, and why they cannot become friends, Akbar argued that they first need to become good neighbours, and you cannot become a good neighbour if you keep exporting terrorism in the name of one fictitious rational or another. The subcontinent, therefore, will remain in a state of turmoil, despite the best intentions of at least some of the governments, since governments become beholden to the ideology of the state of which they are put in charge.

Like his fellow speakers, Akbar alluded to quasi-separatist movements or tendencies in Balochistan and Sindh, which will need to be resolved, not by external factors, but by Pakistanis themselves trying to understand and come to terms with the mistake that was made in the early days of the country’s existence, during the creation of Bangladesh. The concept that continually troubles both Pakistan and its neighbourhood is whether any particular institution where power resides in the power of the gun can hold a people together. At best, this is a temporary solution, said Akbar; in modern times, you can hold a geography together by the power of the gun, but you cannot hold a people together. We are seeing that every institution in Pakistan, including the judiciary, is becoming a political player struggling for its own quota of power within the state. Religion as a basis of Pakistan is really the problem, and therefore the army comes in as the guarantor of an idea that does not work (unlike, for example, India, which is held together because of the idea behind India). The consequences are that the army acquires as much of the economy as it possibly can, which then limits the benefits of that section of the economy to its own members, causing great disparities. A geography can survive with army control, concluded Akbar, but a state cannot survive; it becomes dysfunctional, and when astate becomes dysfunctional, confidence in that state begins to collapse and then wither. That’s what we are seeing at this momentin Pakistan.